


Sickness of the Mind

by Jon



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwarven Politics, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 12:45:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1605659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jon/pseuds/Jon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dain, King Under the Mountain, has depression- real, scathing, sick depression. This is a day in the life. Short drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sickness of the Mind

First it’s the fixation.  
  
It comes with the slightest prompt, the hint of a discomfort or a displeasure. A noise out of place, a voice too loud, clothes sticking to skin and being tight and painful.  
  
He then has to stop, sit for a moment, and that moment stretches on – and in that moment are a thousand little moments where each passing annoyance is magnified – a wave of things  _going wrong_.  
  
He realises, after a few painful minutes, that he’s been sitting and staring into nothing. Wasting the day again. He looks down at his lap at the jumble of papers.  
  
Or maybe it’s just one paper with one brief side of text, neatly written and easily legible.  
  
He still can’t read the words: they make no sense, the black runes’ lines bewitching him as his unfocused gaze traces around and around and around, words registering in a haze in his mind once, before dripping out. Senseless.  
  
He can’t read. He can’t think. Once again, he’s a waste of a King Under the Mountain, for what can a great kingdom do with a king who can’t read, who can’t focus in a court, who drags himself out of his bed to sit and look at crumpled clothes from the previous day, and who then can’t even bring himself to dress?  
  
What can they do with him?  
  
What can  _he_ do with him?  
  
For the hundredth time the fixation comes to Dain Ironfoot. This time, it’s the grating noise of someone talking just that little bit too close to him after the hot words from a nobleman’s venomous letter makes him flush under his beard and his hands slick with sweat.  
  
The king rises. He keeps something together by the Maker’s grace and well-practised dignity as he hands the parchment blindly to his personal assistant, taking a shaking, careful step down from the stone dais. There, chasing him, Dain can feel the Black Dog panting on the back of his neck. He’d watched it year upon year out of the corner of his eye, snarling, growing, twisting, mutating – this  _hideous_  beast – into something even he can’t tame with his new rule in Erebor. This much he knows.  
  
Personally, he thinks everyone’s doing a grand job of not realising anything is wrong. As the months have passed, he has awoken late and exhausted more often in the mornings, taken longer after giving up with fumbling around dressing himself. He stares (when the sun has barely started to think of rising) at his ageing face in the mirror and he claws at his cheeks in disgust – grey hair starting to thin –  _when was the last time he ate_ _?_  
  
He congratulates himself for keeping ‘face’ at least when he’s walked down from his chambers to the strained smiles and people telling him not to worry that he was three hours delayed. The dwarven noblemen and his friends in Erebor’s court look past the missed meals and see a king too busy to eat- but surely he  _must_.  
  
His sons looked past the meals and see abandoned food night in and night out; their father says ‘I’m not hungry’ – that’s that.

Feeling each second of 200 years bearing down on him, he’s at the door about to leave for a pipe much needed. He’s done  _nothing_ today. Nor did he yesterday, nor the day before and neither will he tomorrow.

_  
__Sick._  
  
 _Dragging._ __  
  
Time slows under the Mountain to a standstill, leaving Dain in the middle of a bruised, sullen moment in a dark hallway corner. No one can see him apart from the Dog – and perhaps, as his hand reaches to test the strength of a torch-bracket high on the wall – that’s just the way he wants it.

**Author's Note:**

> In my headcanon, dwarves put a lot of emphasis on work and productivity, and don't have a great understanding of debilitating mental health issues that prevent a dwarf from being a 'functional' member of dwarven society: it can't be explained logically, like a warrior getting a leg chopped off or the common cold. It's seen as something 'dark', and this taboo means it's not spoken about, ignored, and brushed under the proverbial carpet. 
> 
> Dain's story is part of a wider fic I'm writing and his health issues will be talked about in 'Rise of the Nazbukhrin'. It's a reminder that not all mental health stories have conventionally happy endings, but also that not all of them end in death: Dain won't get better or be 'saved', nor do I plan on suicide; he'll be treated with medication when he plucks up the courage to tell his physician what's wrong, but the Black Dog will plague him for the rest of his life. 
> 
> Dain is important for me to write as mentally ill, as I am battling severe mental illness at the moment. Dain's experience of mental illness reflects mine and how I choose to describe it.


End file.
